Singapore, Delphi and nuTonomy To Launch Pilot Of Autonomous, On-Demand Car Service

Sam Abuelsamid
, ContributorA lifetime in the car business, first engineering, now communicatingOpinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Singapore has selected Delphi to provide a fleet of automated taxis in a pilot test, beginning later this year. Engineers, acting as safety drivers, will accompany select commuters in the first phase of the pilot test. By 2019, the company expects to introduce driverless pods in a small, controlled section of Singapore. Later this year, Delphi will reveal plans for similar pilots in American and European cities. (Photo by Sid Quah for Delphi)

To the surprise of almost no one, the probable future of urban transportation will make its world debut in Singapore in 2017. The island city-state has all the ingredients to make it the ideal proving ground for this new approach to personal mobility. While local authorities will handle the necessary infrastructure, tier-one automotive supplier Delphi and Singapore-based startup nuTonomy have been selected to lead the vehicle technology side of the pilot program that will run from 2017 through 2019.

Update: Story revised to reflect that nuTonomy has also been selected to participate in the upcoming trials.

Delphi and the Singapore Land Transport Authority began discussions following the supplier’s successful transcontinental run in an autonomous
Audi SQ5 prototype in April 2015. Delphi’s recently established Software and Services business unit will effectively play the role of a general contractor in the project, coordinating and integrating the efforts of the company’s product development team along with what are expected to be five or six primary partner companies.

“We created the services business unit to focus on a couple of things. One is connected services, all of the off-board, off-vehicle analytics that we do, but one of the biggest parts of it automated driving,” said Glen De Vos, vice president of Delphi’s services business unit. “A lot has happened in the year since we did that cross-country drive, I can’t think of a period of time in the automotive industry when there has been more going on.”

Singapore has selected Delphi to provide a fleet of automated taxis in a pilot test, beginning later this year. Engineers, acting as safety drivers, will accompany select commuters in the first phase of the pilot test. By 2019, the company expects to introduce driverless pods in a small, controlled section of Singapore. Later this year, Delphi will reveal plans for similar pilots in American and European cities. (Photo by Sid Quah for Delphi)

De Vos was referring to the increasingly rapid advancements in trying to get autonomous driving capability ready for real-world deployment. Tech companies, regulators and manufacturers all see this technology as having the greatest potential to impact the nature of personal mobility since the launch of the Ford Model T in 1908. In combination with electric powertrains, connectivity and cloud services, automation could conceivably slash the injuries and fatalities resulting from crashes while improving traffic flow and reducing energy use.

But there is still much to be learned before the urban mobility utopia can be a reality and that’s the purpose of this program in Singapore. As mentioned, this is a near ideal location to try out automated mobility on-demand (AMOD). Singapore is an island city-state with a densely packed urban population of 5.4 million people in an area of 277 square miles or roughly double the size of Detroit. It’s a fairly affluent nation with well developed and maintained infrastructure and warm weather year-round.

An early test of autonomous vehicles in Singapore bypasses the weather related issues that current autonomous systems face and excellent infrastructure will make it easier for the vehicles to navigate around the test area. Singapore residents frequently take taxis to get around town and even to get to mass transit stations.

The phase one pilot program will take place in the One North of the island with six Delphi vehicles that are yet to be built. According to De Vos, Delphi engineers expect to select a base vehicle soon and are hoping to use an electric vehicle with seating for four to six people. So far, Delphi has used the Audi SQ5 crossover as its development platform, but that vehicle has more performance than needed for this application where speeds are not expected to exceed 25 to 30 mph. The
Chevrolet Bolt, Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model S seem like the most likely candidates for this project.

Singapore-based startup nuTonomy has already been testing its own home-grown autonomous vehicle technology on the streets of the city for some time. nuTonomy hopes to have its own fleet of five to 10 cars running as part of a mobility service by 2018.

Following completion of the pilot phase at the end of 2019, Singapore is planning a second larger deployment, hopefully using a vehicle that has been specifically designed for autonomous driving.